Warp-knitted lace strips are used as border ornament of the underwear and outerwear for women. As shown in FIGS. 8 and 9, such lace strip 10 is generally provided with sinuate parts called scallops B consisting of repeated recesses and protrusions on the edge thereof and a large number of parts, each being called picot P, formed of U-bent yarns protruding from the scallops B. Conventional lace fabric of such kind has been knitted, in the direction shown by the arrow in the annexed drawing, chiefly by the raschel knitting machine, and in this case a plurality of units of lace strip have been knitted in the form of one piece of fabric that extending over the full width l of needle-row on the knitting machine and separated into units 10 in the later process.
Separation of the fabric piece into unit strips depends on cutting of the part 11 constituting only ground fabric construction interposed between adjacent two lace fabrics 10, 10 as shown in FIG. 8A along the sinuate line of scallops B by means of cutter 12 operated manually or mechanically. It also depends on such a method that a blasting yarn 14 for connecting picots P, P of adjacent lace fabrics 10, 10 as shown in FIG. 9 is beforehand knitted into the fabric and removed therefrom after completion of all-out knitting, when separate units of lace strip 10 are obtained.
However, these methods have been followed by drawbacks that separation by the use of cutter is low in operation efficiency when performed manually, correct cutting along sinuate line of the scallops is difficult in practical work, and moreover yarn ends 14 remain at the cut-end of the ground fabric, preventing fine finish of the outer edge of scallops B and clear protrusion of picot P, as shown in FIG. 8. In the case of mechanical cutting for separation, remaining of yarn ends at the outer edge of scallops B is similar to that in the previous case and prevents fine finish despite increased operation efficiency. Therefore, lace strips obtained by these methods have been extremely low in commercial value as border ornament.
Separation of the piece into units 10 according to release of basting yarn from the fabric is not followed by such drawbacks as those using the cutter but, on the other hand, followed by disadvantages as inferior ornamental properties resulting from the fact that: since the basting yarn 14 is knitted-in from sinuate scallops 10 to protruding picot P, agreement of protruding ends of picots P, P of adjacent lace fabrics 10, 10 with each other is required, which causes sinuation of the scallops to be weaker than that in the case of FIG. 8, particularly so and nearly straight at the protrusions B' of scallops; and picots can not be provided in the resesses B" of scallops.